Light-emitting diodes as measurement devices for femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract

We present results showing that, when it is used as a photodetector, a light-emitting diode (LED) has a power-dependent response that can be used for sensitive detection and characterization of picosecond and femtosecond laser pulses. A characterization of a typical LED is presented at 800 nm, and we demonstrate how this effect can be used to construct an extremely compact novel autocorrelator based on a Wollaston prism.

All-solid-state cavity-dumped sub-5-fs laser

“…We have also shown that the interferometric autocorrelation of a sub-5-fs compressed pulse, similar to the one depicted in Fig. 14, can be obtained by measuring the two-photon-induced photocurrent [128,129] in a GaP photodiode [130].…”

Optical signal processing via two-photon absorption in a semiconductor microcavity for the next generation of high-speed optical communications network

“…TPA in photodiodes [9], [18] and AlGaAs lightemitting diodes (LEDs) [19] for autocorrelation measurement of picosecond and femtosecond laser pulses has been previously demonstrated. Also, waveguide TPA in commercial laser diodes has also been used to fully characterize picosecond pulses in the temporal and phase domain [20].…”

Simple Autocorrelation Measurement by Using a GaP Photoconductive Detector

“…Phase mismatch, in particular, can lead to a spectral-filtering effect to make a measured autocorrelation function significantly distorted. Several groups have demonstrated that TPA or 3PA based processes can be effective for pulse diagnostics in the femtosecond and picosecond time range with photodiodes using Si [2,3], GaAsP [2,[4][5][6][7], InGaAs [8], SiC [9,10], ZnSSe [11], GaN [12], light-emitting diodes using AlGaAs [13], laser diodes using GaAsP [3], GaAs/AlGaAs [14], GaN [15] and photocathodes using CsI and CuI PMTs [16] in autocorrelator schemes. Other semiconductor waveguides and microcavity structure devices were also developed [17][18][19].…”